Why Wi-Fi 6, aka 802.11ax, for wireless?

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HARDWARE By Ben Myers Now that there is broad availability of routers compatible with the new Wi-Fi 6 standard, it’s easy to ask, “What’s in it for me
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abbodi86

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Excellent, well-written article.

Do you have any thoughts or tips about installing drivers for the new network Wi-Fi card?

Thanks!

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Drivers come with the hardware / are already in Windows. No need to do anything special.

Do you have any particular issues?

cheers, Paul

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I installed a new Intel AX200 Wifi-6 M.2 card in my Dell G3 laptop some time ago. I use Linux, but I had Windows 10 installed at the time as part of a dual-boot. Eventually I booted Windows for one reason or another, and I discovered that I had no internet. Windows 10 didn’t know what to do with the card (even though the previous wifi card was also an Intel, only one generation older, and it worked). I plugged in an ethernet cable, got the driver from the Intel site and it worked fine.

Windows 10 may have the driver for the card by now. If so, you should not need to do anything other than physically install the card.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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As a precaution before installing a new network card, obtain the current drivers from the card manufacturer web site.  Then, if Windows 10 somehow fails to see the newly installed card, install the drivers downloaded previously.

My tendency has been to use Intel wifi cards somewhat exclusively.  What I found is that in replacing an Intel 802.11ac card with an AX200 802.11ax card, Windows recognizes the card and adjusts the drivers automatically.  I have installed Windows 10 Version 20H2, and 21H1 more recently, on my own laptops.  The automatic recognition of an 802.11ax card may not happen for earlier versions of Windows 10.

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opti1

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Paul T wrote:

Do you have any particular issues?

No. I was just asking for informational purposes.  🙂

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